You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
lol you take issue with the review part but not the lies and propaganda?
Not particularly. It's obviously baseless. Nothing I've written about isn't happening. Whether you like the game or not is completely subjective, but the fact that they have JIRA tickets in for specific actions, and that those things are going to be worked on... There's nothing there to really be subjective about, or frankly to even lie about.
Most, though obviously not all, of the anti-SotA folks around here are just trolling. The idea that a game is only good if certain people deem it so and that it's imperative that anyone who thinks otherwise gets corrected, is just a little limp. I've never charged into a Starbucks and slapped a mocha whip thingamabopper out of someone's hand because I prefer my coffee black and think having it any other way borders on blasphemy. That's the effective argument of the loudest voices, "don't you dare spend your money on something I don't like!"
Clearly there are some folks who don't care for the game or question some of the information put out by myself or Port, who also put together really intelligent and thoughtful points about their position. I really enjoy those, which is why I engage in the forums at all. I really enjoy it when someone like @Aron_Swordmaster fires off a really good point that I hadn't thought about.
When you're surrounded by an echo chamber of your own ideals, you never have the chance to test and check your position on a subject. Opening up to an opposing point of view is the only way to really test your position and see if it can hold up. If it can't, you need to shore it up with more facts, or realize where you were wrong and adjust fire.
If someone wants to spend $2k buying a house in a game, I say go for it. If you only had $1k, and you spend the other grand because you were thinking you'd get some financial return on your investment later, I'm not really okay with that.
But this is where I think people really struggle to see why you can remain a supporter of the game; encouraging this mindset is the entire basis of how Shroud has since been designed, almost every decision around the economy is made based on enforcing artificial rarity to allow Real Money Traders to purchase items in the Add On Store, and try and make a profit selling those items afterwards. The future you hope for is directly dependent upon encouraging the exact attitude you find morally dubious.
For you, it seems the issue is in openly formalising it, bringing backers into actual Capital I Investment schemes.
But already much of the toxic abuse critics have found themselves running into is because the RMTs feel you're challenging their private investments, and so they have to drive off or destroy you to keep other people's money coming into the game. Indeed I suspect a few of them are genuinely real life disabled and RMT around computer games is their main source of income, as well as social life; although that's much harder to prove than just tracking who has open trading feedback on their Steam/Shroud profiles etc. Certainly however I've already seen users openly declare on the forums they feel pressured into Real Money purchases they can't afford, because the Grind in game is so deliberately set up to make RMT desirable above all else...
We already know the damage to real lives is being done, even if we can't exactly say how much. It's woven into every aspect of the game now.
Now most of we critics were ourselves originally Kickstarter backers; at some point we ourselves believed in the team, and the game, obviously. The problem is that Shroud has proven the validity of the "Slippery Slope" argument in some cases, and our amazement with your defending the game is that you haven't quite realised this is as bad as it's got already. I don't think Portalarium set out to take the money and run, but they've slowly over the years compromised their own morality in the name of further survival to the point that they're now far beyond the moral line you have just drawn for yourself.
Look at the original Kickstarter; sane backers understood they were funding an idea not a promise with regards to the game itself. However they also had some security in the sense that the public information Portalarium and Lord British himself put out in 2013 indicated it would be a Peer to Peer system, where you would have access to not just the Asset Packs, but also the game would allow open modding too; By switching to an MMO model because that was where the money was though, they've now effectively moved from a situation where backers could hope to at least keep the project alive no matter what, to one where if Portalarium does indeed fail they lose EVERYTHING. That $2000 house they purchased? They can't keep that if the central servers shut down. Everything built up to that point vanishes...
Unless Portalarium Open Sources the game? They didn't do that with Ultimate Collector. I'd be surprised (but pleased) if they did that with Shroud... I'd be unsurprised however if legally they can't, because of the contracts they have with the Third Party Unity assets they signed to sell them on. That was, after all, one reason they gave for ending the free Asset Packs earlier. And what if the new server owners decide not to honour the exclusivity of house design someone paid $2000 to Portalarium for? How would Portalarium allow you to transfer your old account and it's settings to a new Open Source Shroud either without breaking all sorts of confidentiality clauses?
It's obviously NOT going to happen.
Secondly, I mentioned the physical rewards for a very definite reason; the Kickstarter T&C made quite clear, even at the time of signing in 2013, that physical rewards HAD to be completed. Software was a bit more nebulous, especially if it was the Project being Kickstarted, but the promised rewards were supposed to be a direct purchase. Portalarium have since fudged that, and it looks like still aren't budgetting for them even now... I suspect the remaining funds they have aren't even enough to cover producing all of them if they started today; Let's say 15,000 of the 22,332 Kickstarter backers have a physical reward worth $10 on their account... that's $150,000 outstanding already. That's an incredibly low ball figure though; International Postage alone was $15 by itself, which was something we eventually had to pay for on top of our backing, and still has to come out of what ever money Portalarium has left...
Money they seem to have already spent on development of the project. Frankly, I'm expecting most backers won't get any physical rewards at all unless the game massively takes off and they pause development some time to go back and finish them with current spending. Which is something else you said was immoral.
So when you say:
" If you only had $1k, and you spend the other grand because you were thinking you'd get some financial return on your investment later, I'm not really okay with that"
From our perspective, Portalarium not only has already done that, but for years already they've been making people feel like if they don't keep on spending, they're not only going to lose things they've already had, but they're never going to even get the things they once thought they'd purchased.
The games that are even worse you refer too? Would one of them be Star Citizen by any chance? Because I agree that's even more morally offensive. JPGs of ships for thousands of dollars you may never even get? The only problem is... Portalarium are on record as saying they spoke to Chris Roberts about how to set up and run their own Kickstarter. Again, we're talking about differences in degree, not in nature here. After all, how many of the digital Kickstarter rewards for Shroud have in game models now?
So when we talk about Shroud being a "Bad" game... that's what we're talking about. Most of us also think it's not a fun game to play, we hate the combat, the grind, the shonky animation or what ever else... but we recognise the unfair, immoral model is not just at the core of what Shroud is now, but if it ever stops, the game is completely gone.
But this is where I think people really struggle to see why you can remain a supporter of the game; encouraging this mindset is the entire basis of how Shroud has since been designed, almost every decision around the economy is made based on enforcing artificial rarity to allow Real Money Traders to purchase items in the Add On Store, and try and make a profit selling those items afterwards. The future you hope for is directly dependent upon encouraging the exact attitude you find morally dubious.
...
I disagree strongly with a couple of your points.
First, you're right that the game has been designed so that people can purchase from the cash shop and sell online, that's true. No one has ever tried to suggest that wasn't true to my knowledge, because it's been intentional and openly stated. It's not really uncommon practice in projects that want to ensure every possible item in a game is available to players in the game for in game currency. That means you can buy SotA, and there is literally nothing you can't have if you can convince someone who has it to buy it for you.
It's a way for players to convert real currency into in-game currency that doesn't violate immersion and helps to prevent gold-farmers. Plenty of games do similar things to one degree or another, and it's a valid revenue model. There is a massive difference between that and what I'm talking about.
I honestly don't see how you can even compare it. On one hand, you're paying for digital goods in some form. Either buy it from the cash shop or buy spending time in-game accumulating digital wealth. On the other, you're purchasing stock in a company with the expectation of appreciation. Not in a million years would I buy a digital good and expect some sort of appreciation on it. That is in no way the same thing.
I think the hang up is that you're seeing it as some one spending money either way, and that's not what I object to. Spend your money however you want. If you want that digital house, go for it. I just object to the idea of tying some sort of company stock to the purchase of that house. And my objection to Title III isn't just this game, it's in general. And that's coming from someone who bought into Crowfall at well into the "accredited" level during their crowd-equity raise, so there's a certain amount of self-acknowledged hypocrisy there.
I think the critical point is that I have no problem with people spending money. I have no problem with games selling digital assets for real money (Shroud, World of Warships, or anything else). I've blown enough money on that crap that I've actually itemized it on my tax returns. If I like something, I'll throw money at them. The ONLY thing I object to is allowing unsophisticated investors to buy equity stakes in projects, and in that case only because I worry some people may actually think of it as an investment. People should be investing. They should not be investing in non-publicly traded companies and without experience or advice from a fiduciary.
I also kind of disagree with the idea that SotA became an MMO. I always understood it to be an MMO. Maybe it was because I met with the team just before the Kickstarter, but there was never a point where I thought the MMO piece wasn't front in center. In fact, I was writing for another site at the time and specifically talked about it being an MMO in my first article.
I don't think that it's really fair or accurate to say that it was ever anything else, though I do think it's completely fair to say that you (and obviously others) felt otherwise. I don't believe the vision of the game changed at all, but clearly there was some sort of misrepresentation. I'm certain it wasn't intentional, but something has to have been borked in the communication if this many people legitimately thought the game was something other than an MMO when they backed.
Anyone in that boat is completely justified in being irritated that they didn't get the game they were backing. That's not the same thing as calling the team crooks and accusing them of trying to rip people off, though. I've backed things that didn't go like I expected, too. (*cough*damnjellyfishaquariums*cough*) That's not on them, though. That's on me, because that's the nature of crowdfunding.
Again, great points on the physical items. I've asked about it before, and the answer has always been that it's the final check in calling the game live. I'd say, and just me shooting from the hip, that we should see something before the end of the year on it, with that in mind.
Am I biased? Sure. I have zero problem admitting that. Several of these devs are friends, and there's just a lot about the project that I like, and I've never hid that from anyone. There's no such thing as unbiased. There's just people who lie about it, and I'm not one of those. This game isn't for everyone.
I honestly don't see how you can even compare it. On one hand, you're paying for digital goods in some form. Either buy it from the cash shop or buy spending time in-game accumulating digital wealth. On the other, you're purchasing stock in a company with the expectation of appreciation. Not in a million years would I buy a digital good and expect some sort of appreciation on it. That is in no way the same thing.
It's astounding you can say that you can't see the comparison; because the very definition of a Real Money Trader in a computer game is that they are spending money in Shroud specifically to appreciate their material assets in real life. You go on to say this:
The ONLY thing I object to is allowing unsophisticated investors to buy equity stakes in projects, and in that case only because I worry some people may actually think of it as an investment. People should be investing. They should not be investing in non-publicly traded companies and without experience or advice from a fiduciary.
You can only say the two are not identical by referring specifically to Equity Stakes. However an RMT business literally cannot operate without first making a digital investment in digital goods, in order to have stock to then trade to others to make profit and thus begin appreciating.
The idea that people don't already think of Shroud as an investment simply because it's not a formal equity investing scheme is ridiculous.
Indeed, not only are the RMTs fully aware that this is what they want, but much of the criticism we have is that we've seen for years now how RMTs use a combination of being the highest level backers & having direct access to the Devs (Markee Dragon and Chris Spears relationship for instance) to haul development away from the design at Kickstarter into making the game ever more dependent upon RMT.
And they've also resorted to a number of extremely dubious and outright hateful behaviours, as well as directly criminal actions to try and drive off people who get in the way of their ability to RMT in Shroud. There is one user on the Steam forums who openly stated he wished to destroy his "enemies", and who every time he made an RMT sale, asked the recipient to go to one of the threads of the critics and insult them as a thank you to him. The sociopath who resorted to threatening people's children on Reddit has himself hinted that he's doing it because there's something else at stake, and it's likely his RMT too.
I also kind of disagree with the idea that SotA became an MMO. I always understood it to be an MMO. Maybe it was because I met with the team just before the Kickstarter, but there was never a point where I thought the MMO piece wasn't front in center. In fact, I was writing for another site at the time and specifically talked about it being an MMO in my first article.
Look at the Kickstarter on the Wayback Machine for what it was like at launch. In particular, look at the launch video; It doesn't mention a single multiplayer game except UO briefly in the last few seconds (at 4:50 iirc?). Every game shown was either the initial Shroud mock up (I think? I don't recognise the engine), or the single player Ultimas.
Neither the words MMO nor Massively appear in the Kickstarter, except in the FAQ... where it specifically states the game WONT be an MMO.
You can find comments from the Dev Team promising everyone everything they might ever hope for back then, of course. In
particular there's the infamous one where Lord British himself insists
the game will be Buy to Own and he hates microtransactions.
Instead we get a Fee To Pay model with macro transactions and talk of even going to a Subscription model, with an Equity Funding system on top of that too.
But sticking just with the idea it was always going to be an MMO; my comments about how the data is transferred between clients matters because it's possible for a game to still be an MMO and be Peer to Peer which would allow all of the things like client modification and future open sourcing we were promised. However the design quickly got pulled over towards the typical MMO design of a vital central server, thus ensuring all of those items are now impossible.
I'm certain it wasn't intentional, but something has to have been borked in the communication if this many people legitimately thought the game was something other than an MMO when they backed.
My own view is this; whether it's accurate or not we'll only know after all of this is over; but my explanation for what should be undeniable facts is as follows...
* At the start of Kickstarter they weren't using the Unity engine. I suspect they've since discovered it's not as good as they hoped (apparently the poor cave designs were because it can't allow terrain floors stacked above each other) and they're also just not that good at coding it themselves. Hence the huge delays and poor content...
* Personally, everything I've heard indicates the push for RMT and a real cash based economy specifically comes from Chris Spears. So I imagine LB comes to the office and says "I've got these great ideas!" and then Starr Long and CS etc who have to do the actual work struggle with it, and meanwhile CS re-writes them all because he thinks only housing add ons bring in money
* All of which leads to Portalarium working slowly and bleeding money. They're not stealing it, but because most of the Kickstarters really HATE how the game has since evolved, and aren't coming back, they're resorting to more and more dubious means of keeping the lights on
* And I suspect much of the support for what is a toxic RMT community and how it behaves to others is coming from stress at trying to keep the project alive. Maybe Chris Spears wouldn't be so thin skinned on Reddit, for instance, if it wasn't a 4 years overdue struggle to even keep going... but that's a reason, NOT an excuse.
All of this of course is based on seeing the game is NOT what we asked for, and isn't going well. I don't expect you'll agree with me therefore. But we do genuinely think something like the above...
I honestly don't see how you can even compare it. On one hand, you're paying for digital goods in some form. Either buy it from the cash shop or buy spending time in-game accumulating digital wealth. On the other, you're purchasing stock in a company with the expectation of appreciation. Not in a million years would I buy a digital good and expect some sort of appreciation on it. That is in no way the same thing.
It's astounding you can say that you can't see the comparison; because the very definition of a Real Money Trader in a computer game is that they are spending money in Shroud specifically to appreciate their material assets in real life. You go on to say this:
The ONLY thing I object to is allowing unsophisticated investors to buy equity stakes in projects, and in that case only because I worry some people may actually think of it as an investment. People should be investing. They should not be investing in non-publicly traded companies and without experience or advice from a fiduciary.
You can only say the two are not identical by referring specifically to Equity Stakes. However an RMT business literally cannot operate without first making a digital investment in digital goods, in order to have stock to then trade to others to make profit and thus begin appreciating.
The idea that people don't already think of Shroud as an investment simply because it's not a formal equity investing scheme is ridiculous.
Indeed, not only are the RMTs fully aware that this is what they want, but much of the criticism we have is that we've seen for years now how RMTs use a combination of being the highest level backers & having direct access to the Devs (Markee Dragon and Chris Spears relationship for instance) to haul development away from the design at Kickstarter into making the game ever more dependent upon RMT.
. . . All of this of course is based on seeing the game is NOT what we asked for, and isn't going well. I don't expect you'll agree with me therefore. But we do genuinely think something like the above...
There's a massive difference between real money transfer and buying equity. I'm not trying to be obtuse, but the two things aren't remotely similar. I can buy a lawn mower and use it to mow lawns, which is the RMT version of what you're talking about. You make a purchase, and you use your access to that asset to generate something of value, which is in turn converted to real money. The other is an investment in the company itself, with an expectation of dividends or divestiture of stock at some point.
That's not really even applicable here, though; because the missing piece in your point is converting digital good to real money. You can pay money to Port to get in-game assets, but you can't convert in-game assets to real money. This model is specifically used to combat that very thing. So you can accumulate digital wealth from your purchases, but not real wealth. Nothing is going to be worth in real money second-hand what you paid for it from the cash shop, even if you find some way to market it.
Maybe, let me ask this. Where do you see the similarity in some people finding a way to capitalize on a game that they bought, and a company selling equity to people? Those seem wildly different to me, so I have to be missing your point there.
w/r to the MMO bit, there's a lot of contextual info missing there. If you go back at the time and look at games that launched around the same time, you'll see that many obvious MMOs were going out of their way to not call themselves MMOs. "WoW-clone" was a really popular term at the time, and a lot of large publishers felt their games hadn't performed because they were seen as competitive to WoW.
Star Citizen and Crowfall being two really good examples, especially because they got marketing advice from the same sources. Neither claimed to be an MMO, but it's pretty obvious both are. Sure, there are some quirks that set them apart, but they're still multiplayer, persistent, and online.
So yes, they did avoid calling the spade a spade, but read through what they were intending. It's online (with an offline component), it's multiplayer, and it's persistent with an player-driven economy. To site your linked archive: "Multiplayer Online Game - which can also be played solo player / offline" Note how solo/offline is the after thought there. In the same original description of the game, they mention player housing in the persistent world, meaningful crafting related to combat, PvP, and playing scenes in groups. None of which can be done solo and offline.
Take another look at the write-up, but don't look for MMO. Instead, look for "multiplayer," "online," "persistent," and other terms like that that effectively mean the same thing.
The note on the engine being different, that's not really a great point, though. The engine was different because the earlier version of SotA was another game. A lot of those early assets were from the earlier project that got converted into SotA. Other games do the same thing, as they'll demo a prototype that often isn't in the same engine as the eventual game. It's just to give prospective publishers (and in this case backers) an idea of what the goal is.
That said, and I might blow your mind here, but I don't disagree that what you're getting is different from what you expected and thought you were backing. You have a perfectly valid point that early language around the game that avoided calling the game an MMO led backers to believe they were backing something else. That's a 100% legitimate complaint, and I don't think I've ever argued against it.
I don't think the team set out to misrepresent what they were doing, but it's clear the net result was miscommunication. I do argue against the idea that there was some sort of evil plot to defraud people, and I argue against the idea that the game is now a ripoff because it's not what those people wanted. Some people like what it is and want to spend money on it. That's a perfectly valid business transaction to my mind.
Lord British saw what his former cohort Chris Roberts was able to do by marketing Star Citizen and jumped in unprepared to try and get on the bandwagon.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Lord British saw what his former cohort Chris Roberts was able to do by marketing Star Citizen and jumped in unprepared to try and get on the bandwagon.
SC hadn't started their campaign when the decision was made to crowdfund SotA, and the SC campaign had only made $4mil (which was good, but not enough to make a game good) when SotA started their campaign.
Also of note in the video RG said they followed what Chris did and were in a pickle so they had less then 90 days to put together the pitch for kickstarter. Port laid off their development staff from the social game Ultimate Collector in Dec 2012 after getting 7m in VC funds in Jun/Jul of 2012.
I read an interesting article in the WSJ today about the collapse of Jia Yueting and LeEco. There were a couple of passages that fit perfectly here...and really for all crowdfunded games.
"When you use hype to stretch reality, reality usually wins.”
"It’s a painful lesson for all that investors should be very cautious chasing shiny objects. No matter who brings those to you."
SC launched Kickstarter in Oct 2012. Shroud in April 2013. That's 6 months earlier.
I didn't say when they launched their campaign. I said when they made the decision to launch a campaign. There's a run-up before it shows in KS. A lot of paperwork, planning a schedule of announcements, putting together a media campaign. You don't decide you want to crowdfund something and just post it on KS the next day.
SC launched Kickstarter in Oct 2012. Shroud in April 2013. That's 6 months earlier.
I didn't say when they launched their campaign. I said when they made the decision to launch a campaign. There's a run-up before it shows in KS. A lot of paperwork, planning a schedule of announcements, putting together a media campaign. You don't decide you want to crowdfund something and just post it on KS the next day.
You don't decide you want to crowdfund something and just post it on KS the next day.
Yeah.. that would just result in making up mechanics and lots of changes... customers would probably be very disappointed in the final product and you'd likely be begging for additional funding before the game was complete.
Oh wait...
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I didn't say when they launched their campaign. I said when they made the decision to launch a campaign. There's a run-up before it shows in KS. A lot of paperwork, planning a schedule of announcements, putting together a media campaign. You don't decide you want to crowdfund something and just post it on KS the next day.
That is false. They admitted in the video they had 90 days of funding left of closing Port or coming up with more money. They laid off the staff of Port in Dec 2012, kickstarter started March 2013. That is more then 90 days. You also have in the video them saying they talked to Chris about this and got some feedback. They also admit in the video they needed more then the 1m but didn't want to put the real figure in because it would scare off people.
And you don't need 45 days lead time to start a kickstarter. They have no long term business plan or other plans to make money then introduce new "rares" to sell to people or the income from the COTO for rent. Look at the stupid kickstarters for Potato Salad or other things. You think they all waited 45 days to start the kickstarter?
Your defending things that are not true, this is your bias showing loud and clear.
SC launched Kickstarter in Oct 2012. Shroud in April 2013. That's 6 months earlier.
I didn't say when they launched their campaign. I said when they made the decision to launch a campaign. There's a run-up before it shows in KS. A lot of paperwork, planning a schedule of announcements, putting together a media campaign. You don't decide you want to crowdfund something and just post it on KS the next day.
And you don't think SC did the same?
Your argument is moot.
More smoke and mirrors. *rolls eyes*
WTH are you talking about? You said they CF'd because SC was successful. They decided to crowdfund before SC was really all that successful.
You don't decide you want to crowdfund something and just post it on KS the next day.
Yeah.. that would just result in making up mechanics and lots of changes... customers would probably be very disappointed in the final product and you'd likely be begging for additional funding before the game was complete.
Oh wait...
Okay, name an MMO that crowdfunded and then didn't have a revenue model in place before officially launching.
I didn't say when they launched their campaign. I said when they made the decision to launch a campaign. There's a run-up before it shows in KS. A lot of paperwork, planning a schedule of announcements, putting together a media campaign. You don't decide you want to crowdfund something and just post it on KS the next day.
That is false. They admitted in the video they had 90 days of funding left of closing Port or coming up with more money. They laid off the staff of Port in Dec 2012, kickstarter started March 2013. That is more then 90 days. You also have in the video them saying they talked to Chris about this and got some feedback. They also admit in the video they needed more then the 1m but didn't want to put the real figure in because it would scare off people.
And you don't need 45 days lead time to start a kickstarter. They have no long term business plan or other plans to make money then introduce new "rares" to sell to people or the income from the COTO for rent. Look at the stupid kickstarters for Potato Salad or other things. You think they all waited 45 days to start the kickstarter?
Your defending things that are not true, this is your bias showing loud and clear.
Sure, you can just throw some crap on KS and crowdfund it. I'm guessing you don't have a lot of experience dealing with corporations, VCs, and angel investors, though.
I've talked to some teams about funding models a whole year before they announced anything. Just because you hear about something on Day X, doesn't mean they decided to do it on Day X - 1. It's especially true of new models of funding that haven't been very tested yet.
Did they rush to put a compaign together? Without a doubt. Did they start the actual process of registering for the KS campaign and notifying media only three months or so before the campaign, yeah. None of that has anything to do with the very specific point I was remarking on, which is that SC wasn't this massive success that made the Port guys suddenly decide to crowdfund. It's easy to look at SC's funding now and say that, but it wasn't like that in context. SC hadn't raised near enough to make a game at the end of their campaign, and there was no way to know post-campaign contributions would be on the level they have at the time.
So no, Port didn't see SC as this $100mil success and suddenly decide they wanted a piece of that pie. Those guys all hung out and talked together at the time, the idea was on the table way before anything was announced.
You don't decide you want to crowdfund something and just post it on KS the next day.
Yeah.. that would just result in making up mechanics and lots of changes... customers would probably be very disappointed in the final product and you'd likely be begging for additional funding before the game was complete.
Oh wait...
Okay, name an MMO that crowdfunded and then didn't have a revenue model in place before officially launching.
Please.. just stop.
It's reached the point of embarrassment. If I really hated the game I would keep you going but I actually have fond memories of Ultimas going back to Ultima 2. The best thing you can do is just stop responding and stop hyping and hope they somehow pull a rabbit out of their hats. Articles and threads like this aren't helping the cause any more than "tiger's blood" was helping Charlie Sheen "win".
Post edited by Slapshot1188 on
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Comments
The only two things that keep SotA going...apart from the gullible whale pod.
~~ postlarval ~~
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/~~ postlarval ~~
Most, though obviously not all, of the anti-SotA folks around here are just trolling. The idea that a game is only good if certain people deem it so and that it's imperative that anyone who thinks otherwise gets corrected, is just a little limp. I've never charged into a Starbucks and slapped a mocha whip thingamabopper out of someone's hand because I prefer my coffee black and think having it any other way borders on blasphemy. That's the effective argument of the loudest voices, "don't you dare spend your money on something I don't like!"
Clearly there are some folks who don't care for the game or question some of the information put out by myself or Port, who also put together really intelligent and thoughtful points about their position. I really enjoy those, which is why I engage in the forums at all. I really enjoy it when someone like @Aron_Swordmaster fires off a really good point that I hadn't thought about.
When you're surrounded by an echo chamber of your own ideals, you never have the chance to test and check your position on a subject. Opening up to an opposing point of view is the only way to really test your position and see if it can hold up. If it can't, you need to shore it up with more facts, or realize where you were wrong and adjust fire.
But this is where I think people really struggle to see why you can remain a supporter of the game; encouraging this mindset is the entire basis of how Shroud has since been designed, almost every decision around the economy is made based on enforcing artificial rarity to allow Real Money Traders to purchase items in the Add On Store, and try and make a profit selling those items afterwards. The future you hope for is directly dependent upon encouraging the exact attitude you find morally dubious.
For you, it seems the issue is in openly formalising it, bringing backers into actual Capital I Investment schemes.
But already much of the toxic abuse critics have found themselves running into is because the RMTs feel you're challenging their private investments, and so they have to drive off or destroy you to keep other people's money coming into the game. Indeed I suspect a few of them are genuinely real life disabled and RMT around computer games is their main source of income, as well as social life; although that's much harder to prove than just tracking who has open trading feedback on their Steam/Shroud profiles etc. Certainly however I've already seen users openly declare on the forums they feel pressured into Real Money purchases they can't afford, because the Grind in game is so deliberately set up to make RMT desirable above all else...
We already know the damage to real lives is being done, even if we can't exactly say how much. It's woven into every aspect of the game now.
Now most of we critics were ourselves originally Kickstarter backers; at some point we ourselves believed in the team, and the game, obviously. The problem is that Shroud has proven the validity of the "Slippery Slope" argument in some cases, and our amazement with your defending the game is that you haven't quite realised this is as bad as it's got already. I don't think Portalarium set out to take the money and run, but they've slowly over the years compromised their own morality in the name of further survival to the point that they're now far beyond the moral line you have just drawn for yourself.
Look at the original Kickstarter; sane backers understood they were funding an idea not a promise with regards to the game itself. However they also had some security in the sense that the public information Portalarium and Lord British himself put out in 2013 indicated it would be a Peer to Peer system, where you would have access to not just the Asset Packs, but also the game would allow open modding too; By switching to an MMO model because that was where the money was though, they've now effectively moved from a situation where backers could hope to at least keep the project alive no matter what, to one where if Portalarium does indeed fail they lose EVERYTHING. That $2000 house they purchased? They can't keep that if the central servers shut down. Everything built up to that point vanishes...
Unless Portalarium Open Sources the game? They didn't do that with Ultimate Collector. I'd be surprised (but pleased) if they did that with Shroud... I'd be unsurprised however if legally they can't, because of the contracts they have with the Third Party Unity assets they signed to sell them on. That was, after all, one reason they gave for ending the free Asset Packs earlier. And what if the new server owners decide not to honour the exclusivity of house design someone paid $2000 to Portalarium for? How would Portalarium allow you to transfer your old account and it's settings to a new Open Source Shroud either without breaking all sorts of confidentiality clauses?
It's obviously NOT going to happen.
Secondly, I mentioned the physical rewards for a very definite reason; the Kickstarter T&C made quite clear, even at the time of signing in 2013, that physical rewards HAD to be completed. Software was a bit more nebulous, especially if it was the Project being Kickstarted, but the promised rewards were supposed to be a direct purchase. Portalarium have since fudged that, and it looks like still aren't budgetting for them even now... I suspect the remaining funds they have aren't even enough to cover producing all of them if they started today; Let's say 15,000 of the 22,332 Kickstarter backers have a physical reward worth $10 on their account... that's $150,000 outstanding already. That's an incredibly low ball figure though; International Postage alone was $15 by itself, which was something we eventually had to pay for on top of our backing, and still has to come out of what ever money Portalarium has left...
Money they seem to have already spent on development of the project. Frankly, I'm expecting most backers won't get any physical rewards at all unless the game massively takes off and they pause development some time to go back and finish them with current spending. Which is something else you said was immoral.
So when you say:
" If you only had $1k, and you spend the other grand because you were thinking you'd get some financial return on your investment later, I'm not really okay with that"
From our perspective, Portalarium not only has already done that, but for years already they've been making people feel like if they don't keep on spending, they're not only going to lose things they've already had, but they're never going to even get the things they once thought they'd purchased.
The games that are even worse you refer too? Would one of them be Star Citizen by any chance? Because I agree that's even more morally offensive. JPGs of ships for thousands of dollars you may never even get? The only problem is... Portalarium are on record as saying they spoke to Chris Roberts about how to set up and run their own Kickstarter. Again, we're talking about differences in degree, not in nature here. After all, how many of the digital Kickstarter rewards for Shroud have in game models now?
So when we talk about Shroud being a "Bad" game... that's what we're talking about. Most of us also think it's not a fun game to play, we hate the combat, the grind, the shonky animation or what ever else... but we recognise the unfair, immoral model is not just at the core of what Shroud is now, but if it ever stops, the game is completely gone.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
First, you're right that the game has been designed so that people can purchase from the cash shop and sell online, that's true. No one has ever tried to suggest that wasn't true to my knowledge, because it's been intentional and openly stated. It's not really uncommon practice in projects that want to ensure every possible item in a game is available to players in the game for in game currency. That means you can buy SotA, and there is literally nothing you can't have if you can convince someone who has it to buy it for you.
It's a way for players to convert real currency into in-game currency that doesn't violate immersion and helps to prevent gold-farmers. Plenty of games do similar things to one degree or another, and it's a valid revenue model. There is a massive difference between that and what I'm talking about.
I honestly don't see how you can even compare it. On one hand, you're paying for digital goods in some form. Either buy it from the cash shop or buy spending time in-game accumulating digital wealth. On the other, you're purchasing stock in a company with the expectation of appreciation. Not in a million years would I buy a digital good and expect some sort of appreciation on it. That is in no way the same thing.
I think the hang up is that you're seeing it as some one spending money either way, and that's not what I object to. Spend your money however you want. If you want that digital house, go for it. I just object to the idea of tying some sort of company stock to the purchase of that house. And my objection to Title III isn't just this game, it's in general. And that's coming from someone who bought into Crowfall at well into the "accredited" level during their crowd-equity raise, so there's a certain amount of self-acknowledged hypocrisy there.
I think the critical point is that I have no problem with people spending money. I have no problem with games selling digital assets for real money (Shroud, World of Warships, or anything else). I've blown enough money on that crap that I've actually itemized it on my tax returns. If I like something, I'll throw money at them. The ONLY thing I object to is allowing unsophisticated investors to buy equity stakes in projects, and in that case only because I worry some people may actually think of it as an investment. People should be investing. They should not be investing in non-publicly traded companies and without experience or advice from a fiduciary.
I also kind of disagree with the idea that SotA became an MMO. I always understood it to be an MMO. Maybe it was because I met with the team just before the Kickstarter, but there was never a point where I thought the MMO piece wasn't front in center. In fact, I was writing for another site at the time and specifically talked about it being an MMO in my first article.
I don't think that it's really fair or accurate to say that it was ever anything else, though I do think it's completely fair to say that you (and obviously others) felt otherwise. I don't believe the vision of the game changed at all, but clearly there was some sort of misrepresentation. I'm certain it wasn't intentional, but something has to have been borked in the communication if this many people legitimately thought the game was something other than an MMO when they backed.
Anyone in that boat is completely justified in being irritated that they didn't get the game they were backing. That's not the same thing as calling the team crooks and accusing them of trying to rip people off, though. I've backed things that didn't go like I expected, too. (*cough*damnjellyfishaquariums*cough*) That's not on them, though. That's on me, because that's the nature of crowdfunding.
Again, great points on the physical items. I've asked about it before, and the answer has always been that it's the final check in calling the game live. I'd say, and just me shooting from the hip, that we should see something before the end of the year on it, with that in mind.
The idea that people don't already think of Shroud as an investment simply because it's not a formal equity investing scheme is ridiculous. Indeed, not only are the RMTs fully aware that this is what they want, but much of the criticism we have is that we've seen for years now how RMTs use a combination of being the highest level backers & having direct access to the Devs (Markee Dragon and Chris Spears relationship for instance) to haul development away from the design at Kickstarter into making the game ever more dependent upon RMT.
And they've also resorted to a number of extremely dubious and outright hateful behaviours, as well as directly criminal actions to try and drive off people who get in the way of their ability to RMT in Shroud. There is one user on the Steam forums who openly stated he wished to destroy his "enemies", and who every time he made an RMT sale, asked the recipient to go to one of the threads of the critics and insult them as a thank you to him. The sociopath who resorted to threatening people's children on Reddit has himself hinted that he's doing it because there's something else at stake, and it's likely his RMT too. Look at the Kickstarter on the Wayback Machine for what it was like at launch. In particular, look at the launch video; It doesn't mention a single multiplayer game except UO briefly in the last few seconds (at 4:50 iirc?). Every game shown was either the initial Shroud mock up (I think? I don't recognise the engine), or the single player Ultimas.
Neither the words MMO nor Massively appear in the Kickstarter, except in the FAQ... where it specifically states the game WONT be an MMO.
"Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game. We will be describing this in more detail in our upcoming community blogs. "
You can find comments from the Dev Team promising everyone everything they might ever hope for back then, of course. In particular there's the infamous one where Lord British himself insists the game will be Buy to Own and he hates microtransactions.
Instead we get a Fee To Pay model with macro transactions and talk of even going to a Subscription model, with an Equity Funding system on top of that too. But sticking just with the idea it was always going to be an MMO; my comments about how the data is transferred between clients matters because it's possible for a game to still be an MMO and be Peer to Peer which would allow all of the things like client modification and future open sourcing we were promised. However the design quickly got pulled over towards the typical MMO design of a vital central server, thus ensuring all of those items are now impossible. My own view is this; whether it's accurate or not we'll only know after all of this is over; but my explanation for what should be undeniable facts is as follows...
* We know they were a few months from bankruptcy after Ultimate Collector from the infamous video where they state they were, that they pitched the Kickstarter deliberately low just to "get out of this pickle", and they did the minimal work they could for it.
* Richard Garriott is a fantastic ideas man, but apparently he's a terrible team leader. Indeed on a recent Rock Paper Shotgun article two different people claimed personal knowledge of the kind of chaos that ensues with this team
* At the start of Kickstarter they weren't using the Unity engine. I suspect they've since discovered it's not as good as they hoped (apparently the poor cave designs were because it can't allow terrain floors stacked above each other) and they're also just not that good at coding it themselves. Hence the huge delays and poor content...
* Personally, everything I've heard indicates the push for RMT and a real cash based economy specifically comes from Chris Spears. So I imagine LB comes to the office and says "I've got these great ideas!" and then Starr Long and CS etc who have to do the actual work struggle with it, and meanwhile CS re-writes them all because he thinks only housing add ons bring in money
* All of which leads to Portalarium working slowly and bleeding money. They're not stealing it, but because most of the Kickstarters really HATE how the game has since evolved, and aren't coming back, they're resorting to more and more dubious means of keeping the lights on
* And I suspect much of the support for what is a toxic RMT community and how it behaves to others is coming from stress at trying to keep the project alive. Maybe Chris Spears wouldn't be so thin skinned on Reddit, for instance, if it wasn't a 4 years overdue struggle to even keep going... but that's a reason, NOT an excuse.
All of this of course is based on seeing the game is NOT what we asked for, and isn't going well. I don't expect you'll agree with me therefore. But we do genuinely think something like the above...
There's a massive difference between real money transfer and buying equity. I'm not trying to be obtuse, but the two things aren't remotely similar. I can buy a lawn mower and use it to mow lawns, which is the RMT version of what you're talking about. You make a purchase, and you use your access to that asset to generate something of value, which is in turn converted to real money. The other is an investment in the company itself, with an expectation of dividends or divestiture of stock at some point.
That's not really even applicable here, though; because the missing piece in your point is converting digital good to real money. You can pay money to Port to get in-game assets, but you can't convert in-game assets to real money. This model is specifically used to combat that very thing. So you can accumulate digital wealth from your purchases, but not real wealth. Nothing is going to be worth in real money second-hand what you paid for it from the cash shop, even if you find some way to market it.
Maybe, let me ask this. Where do you see the similarity in some people finding a way to capitalize on a game that they bought, and a company selling equity to people? Those seem wildly different to me, so I have to be missing your point there.
w/r to the MMO bit, there's a lot of contextual info missing there. If you go back at the time and look at games that launched around the same time, you'll see that many obvious MMOs were going out of their way to not call themselves MMOs. "WoW-clone" was a really popular term at the time, and a lot of large publishers felt their games hadn't performed because they were seen as competitive to WoW.
Star Citizen and Crowfall being two really good examples, especially because they got marketing advice from the same sources. Neither claimed to be an MMO, but it's pretty obvious both are. Sure, there are some quirks that set them apart, but they're still multiplayer, persistent, and online.
So yes, they did avoid calling the spade a spade, but read through what they were intending. It's online (with an offline component), it's multiplayer, and it's persistent with an player-driven economy. To site your linked archive: "Multiplayer Online Game - which can also be played solo player / offline" Note how solo/offline is the after thought there. In the same original description of the game, they mention player housing in the persistent world, meaningful crafting related to combat, PvP, and playing scenes in groups. None of which can be done solo and offline.
Take another look at the write-up, but don't look for MMO. Instead, look for "multiplayer," "online," "persistent," and other terms like that that effectively mean the same thing.
The note on the engine being different, that's not really a great point, though. The engine was different because the earlier version of SotA was another game. A lot of those early assets were from the earlier project that got converted into SotA. Other games do the same thing, as they'll demo a prototype that often isn't in the same engine as the eventual game. It's just to give prospective publishers (and in this case backers) an idea of what the goal is.
That said, and I might blow your mind here, but I don't disagree that what you're getting is different from what you expected and thought you were backing. You have a perfectly valid point that early language around the game that avoided calling the game an MMO led backers to believe they were backing something else. That's a 100% legitimate complaint, and I don't think I've ever argued against it.
I don't think the team set out to misrepresent what they were doing, but it's clear the net result was miscommunication. I do argue against the idea that there was some sort of evil plot to defraud people, and I argue against the idea that the game is now a ripoff because it's not what those people wanted. Some people like what it is and want to spend money on it. That's a perfectly valid business transaction to my mind.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
SC hadn't started their campaign when the decision was made to crowdfund SotA, and the SC campaign had only made $4mil (which was good, but not enough to make a game good) when SotA started their campaign.
That's 6 months earlier.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
"When you use hype to stretch reality, reality usually wins.”
"It’s a painful lesson for all that investors should be very cautious chasing shiny objects. No matter who brings those to you."
~~ postlarval ~~
Your argument is moot.
More smoke and mirrors. *rolls eyes*
~~ postlarval ~~
Oh wait...
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
And you don't need 45 days lead time to start a kickstarter. They have no long term business plan or other plans to make money then introduce new "rares" to sell to people or the income from the COTO for rent. Look at the stupid kickstarters for Potato Salad or other things. You think they all waited 45 days to start the kickstarter?
Your defending things that are not true, this is your bias showing loud and clear.
I don't think you understand what "moot" means.
Okay, name an MMO that crowdfunded and then didn't have a revenue model in place before officially launching.
I've talked to some teams about funding models a whole year before they announced anything. Just because you hear about something on Day X, doesn't mean they decided to do it on Day X - 1. It's especially true of new models of funding that haven't been very tested yet.
Did they rush to put a compaign together? Without a doubt. Did they start the actual process of registering for the KS campaign and notifying media only three months or so before the campaign, yeah. None of that has anything to do with the very specific point I was remarking on, which is that SC wasn't this massive success that made the Port guys suddenly decide to crowdfund. It's easy to look at SC's funding now and say that, but it wasn't like that in context. SC hadn't raised near enough to make a game at the end of their campaign, and there was no way to know post-campaign contributions would be on the level they have at the time.
So no, Port didn't see SC as this $100mil success and suddenly decide they wanted a piece of that pie. Those guys all hung out and talked together at the time, the idea was on the table way before anything was announced.
It's reached the point of embarrassment. If I really hated the game I would keep you going but I actually have fond memories of Ultimas going back to Ultima 2. The best thing you can do is just stop responding and stop hyping and hope they somehow pull a rabbit out of their hats. Articles and threads like this aren't helping the cause any more than "tiger's blood" was helping Charlie Sheen "win".
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018